Bolero (1984)

OK, let’s talk about Bo Derek and Bolero (released in 1984). Critics at the time and almost all online reviewers today will tell you that it’s an awful movie and that she was a terrible actress.

In fact the critics were wrong as usual and sadly most online reviewers assume that this is a bad movie before seeing it. They had already decided that this was an opportunity to indulge in some cheap snark.

The fact is that Bolero is an erotic fantasy romance. This is a kind of movie that frightens mainstream audiences and by the 80s mainstream critics (who praised such movies to the skies in the 70s) had decided that they strongly disapproved of such movies. If you want to enjoy Bolero you have to accept that yes it is an erotic movie.

I shared most of these prejudices before deciding that perhaps I should take another look at the film. I also shared the disdain for Bo Derek until I saw her in Tarzan the Ape Man (1981). Watching her in that I found myself realising that she was actually pretty good. She was giving exactly the performance that was required. It was also the performance that her director, John Dekek (who was also her husband, something else that enraged critics), wanted. She was doing what actresses get paid to do.

Bo Derek is just one in the long line of actresses from the 70s to the 90s who were targeted for career destruction by critics.

Which brings us to Bolero. It is the 1920s. Ayre MacGillvary (Bo Derek) has just graduated from college and has inherited an immense fortune. Now she wants adventure. The first step is to lose her virginity. But she’s a romantic girl and she has seen all of Rudolph Valentino’s movies and she wants the experience to be special. She wants Valentino as the Sheikh to carry her off into the sands of the desert on his horse.

Reality doesn’t always match our dreams. She finds her sheikh and he is handsome and he is a real sheikh but he’s a poetry-writing Oxford graduate and carrying her off on his horse is a problem. He isn’t good with horses. He’s scared of them.

Next up she decides to go to Spain to find a handsome matador. Like Valentino in Blood and Sand.

She finds her matador, Angel Sacristan (Andrea Occhipinti), but he’s also not quite what one might expect. He’s the least popular matador in the country because he never kills the bull. So if you’re worried there’s going to be animal cruelty in this movie I can set your mind at rest. There isn’t any. No bulls are killed. No bulls are injured. For Angel bullfighting is simply a test of skill and courage.

Ayre may have found her dream but there’s Angel’s crazy gypsy girlfriend who vows to kill any woman who steals her man.

And then there’s an accident. Not a fatal one, but it’s a blow to poor Ayre’s dreams.

Among other things this is a movie about women’s sexual fantasies and being a woman Ayre’s fantasies are as much about love as they are about sex. This is a very very romantic movie.

It’s also an homage to silent cinema. Ayre doesn’t just want a man. She wants the kind of romantic hero she has seen in the movies.

It also features sex scenes that are quite explicit for a mainstream Hollywood movie, and a lot of nudity. This was reason enough for many critics to dismiss it out of hand.

It is an erotic movie but it’s an erotic romance movie and it’s a slightly offbeat movie as well.

Don’t worry about whether it gets any of the period details right. This is a total fantasy, inspired by the world of silent cinema rather than the actual world of the 1920s. For the same reason don’t fret too much about any implausibilities in the plot.

I enjoyed Bolero quite a bit and I highly recommend it as pure romantic fantasy.

I saw this movie on a very poor quality DVD years ago. Seeing it now on Blu-Ray is a revelation. It looks great.

The Key (La chiave, 1983)

The Key (La chiave) is a 1983 erotic/romantic drama written and directed by Tinto Brass.

After his nightmarish experiences in the 70s with Salon Kitty and Caligula Brass decided simply to go his own way. He made the movies he wanted to make and he made them the way he wanted to make them. The movies he wanted to make were erotic movies and as a result he has never received the critical respect he deserves. 

And of course critics in the English-speaking world find it impossible to comprehend that erotic movies can be real movies.

A pity, since Tinto Brass made fascinating intelligent perceptive erotic movies with some real emotional depth.

It is Venice in 1939. Nino Rolfe (Frank Finlay) is an art historian. He has been married to Teresa (Stefania Sandrelli) for twenty years. They have a daughter, Lisa (Barbara Cupisti). Lisa has a boyfriend, Laszlo (Franco Branciaroli).

Much to Nino’s dismay Teresa has always been sexually inhibited.

Nino keeps a diary, recording his sexual obsessions. He leaves the key where Teresa will find it. He wants her to read it, and she does.

Teresa begins keeping a diary as well. She wants Nino to read it, which he does.

There is adultery in this movie but what drives the plot is the thought of adultery. Nino knows that there is an attraction between Teresa and Laszlo. He imagines them together. The thought excites him. Teresa knows that this excites Nino and this in turn excites her.

Nino’s jealousy arouses him. This also in turn excites Teresa.

Nino takes nude photographs of Teresa while she sleeps and gets Laszlo to develop and print them. He makes sure that Teresa discovers the photographs.

Lisa knows that these things are going on. Nino, Teresa, Lisa and Laszlo are all complicit in a complex game of deceptions and betrayals and jealousies and suspicions. They are all to some extent willing participants in this game.

Nino earns extra money by issuing phoney authentications for fake paintings - another layer of deception.

Voyeurism is a vey obvious theme in this movie, made more obvious by Brass’s love of mirror shots and sometimes mirror shots within mirror shots. Everything is a reflection of a reflection of reality and maybe what seems to be the reality is a deception as well.

The reading of each other’s diaries by Nino and Teresa is another form of voyeurism.

It’s also a movie about fantasies, and about the way the things we imagine are more exciting than the things we see.

These are people who behave badly but they have their reasons. They are trying to understand their desires and their emotions. In the process people can get hurt but this is not a movie that sees sex as a destructive force. It also doesn’t present voyeurism as destructive.

This is a softcore movie but it goes way beyond anything you would get away with in an American softcore movie. It’s a movie for grown-ups. Tinto Brass made erotic movies that take human erotic desires seriously.

Brass’s movies are very Italian. He has a great love for Italian culture but he has always been relatively uninterested in the Rome of the Swinging 60s or the Milan of the decadent glamorous 80s. He loves the old Italy. This movie takes place just before the outbreak of the war, a war that would destroy the world as it then existed or at least transform it into something unrecognisable. This adds a touch of poignancy which is found in so many of his movies.

The Key is Brass in top form. Highly recommended. It looks great on Blu-Ray.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of his movies. Monella (1998) is my favourite but Miranda (1985) and The Voyeur (1994) are also highly recommended.

Sex and Zen (1991)

Sex and Zen was released by Golden Harvest in 1991 and it is one of the more notorious Hong Kong Category III movies.

Category III was a censorship rating introduced in 1988, similar to the American NC-17 rating. No-one under 18 was allowed to see such films. The NC-17 rating never worked because in the U.S. distributors and exhibitors conspired to wreck the commercial prospects of any film unlucky enough to get such a classification. The Hong Kong Category III rating worked because it was a genuine and honest attempt to allow filmmakers to deal with grown-up subject matter with a reasonable degree of freedom.

Category III movies usually had both graphic violence and explicit sex and nudity. Sex and Zen concentrates on the sex. It’s a wild insane sex comedy.

Mei Yeung-Sheng (Lawrence Ng) is a scholar who believes that what really matters in life is the pursuit of erotic pleasure without reference to conventional rules of morality. This has led to a clash with the wise monk known as the Sack Monk who has tried to persuade him to embrace the virtues of self-denial.

The wise old monk assures the young scholar that no matter how clever you might be the pursuit of other men’s wives will lead to disaster. Retribution is a certainty. Mei Yeung-Sheng refuses to listen.

Mei Yeung-Sheng marries Huk-Yeung (Amy Yip), the daughter of a rich and powerful man known as Master Iron Gate. Huk-Yeung thinks sex is shameful. Their wedding night might not be a total success for the young couple but it provides a great deal of amusement for the audience.

Mei Yeung-Sheng continues his pursuit of women aided by cat burglar Choi Kun-Lun (Lo Lieh). His ability to break into homes and pick locks will be useful - Mei Yeung-Sheng will use the most unscrupulous methods in pursuit of sexual pleasure.

Choi Kun-Lun persuades Mei Yeung-Sheng that his problem with women is that his equipment is not adequate for the job. He needs a hardware upgrade.

The movie now becomes steadily more crazy and outrageous. The young scholar finds a surgeon who can perform the upgrade. The operation should go smoothly as long as it doesn’t rain - this surgeon gets very jumpy when it rains.

And as long as the horse co-operates.

The scholar is only too anxious to find out if the upgrade has been successful. He doesn’t get any complaints from the ladies.

Mei Yeung-Sheng embarks on an erotic spree which gets him into a certain amount of trouble.

After their marriage his wife Huk-Yeung (Amy Yip) had quickly discovered that sex isn’t disgusting after all. In fact she likes it very much indeed. But her husband is away most of the time. She finds some very imaginative ways to provide pleasure to herself but it’s just not the same. She needs a man. She needs a man real bad.

She finds one, in the form of the gardener. Which leads to complicated and unfortunate results. For just about everybody.

Sex and Zen is based on Li Yu’s seventeenth-century erotic novel The Carnal Prayer Mat.

The sex scenes are frequent, very imaginatively shot and very very explicit. And at times very kinky. If you are easily shocked or offended you might want to keep right away from this movie.

Sex and Zen might not be for the faint-hearted but on the other hand it really is very funny and it’s wild and crazy. Highly recommended.

Umbrella’s Blu-Ray release offers a lovely transfer. The main extra is an interview with the director.

Erotic Ghost Story (1990)

Erotic Ghost Story is a 1990 Golden Harvest release directed by Lam Ngai Kai. It’s one of those Hong Kong movies that doesn’t fit neatly into one genre. It’s a horror movie, an erotic movie, a sex comedy and a quirky supernatural romance gone wrong movie. It’s a Category III movie, equivalent to a U.S. NC-17 rating.

There’s a strange opening sequence in which bandits take some girls into the woods for some fun but what the bandits get is horror and terror.

Mostly this sequence lets us know that we shouldn’t take any of the characters at face value and that we are going to be dealing with the supernatural.

We might three pretty girls. We assume at first that they are sisters. The way one of them (Pai, also referred to as Big Sis) deals with an importunate bandit suggests that they have some formidable kung fu skills.

Pai meets an old wandering Taoist priest. They have a bit of a fight but he is perhaps trying to tell her something. Something that she will remember later. She will meet the old Taoist master again.

The sisters encounter a shy young scholar. He is being pursued by brigands. He is rescued by the oldest of the sisters. He is horrified at the impropriety when she touches his hand.

But just as the three girls are not what they seem to be so the young scholar is not a shy sexually repressed bookworm. He’s a demon, and a very very lustful demon.

From the start you’re going to realise that there’s something odd about these three girls. Are they ghosts? Shape-shifters of some kind? Witches? The title (at least the English-language version of the title) might lead you to suspect that they’re ghosts. Given that ghosts in Chinese folklore are corporeal that seems plausible. Chinese ghosts can eat and drink and have sex. But these girls are not ghosts. They’re foxes. Fox spirits. Which are a big thing in Chinese folklore. Such foxes can assume human form. They’re slightly similar to the old European folkloric concept of fairies in the sense that they’re not evil but they can be troublesome and dangerous. Or they can be harmless. In this movie the girls are definitely not the least bit evil. Although they are rather lustful!

These three girls are trying by means of Taoist study to achieve a permanent transformation from their fox forms into human form.

Their problem is that they just can’t keep their clothes on when the young scholar is around.

The movie seems to be settling into being a lighthearted romance with some sex comedy touches. There are plenty of comic moments that are genuinely amusing. And lots of sex. This is a Category III movie. This is strong softcore with very explicit female nudity and fairly raunchy sex scenes. The sex is good-natured and joyous. These girls enjoy a good tumble with a man.

The girls and the scholar are having lots of good times until one of the girls notices something very disturbing about herself. Something is happening to her.

Now Pai remembers the old Taoist master. She may need his help. The girls’ kung fu skills will not be enough to deal with the situation.

The movie now becomes more of an action movie and much more of a horror movie.

The three lead actresses are all good and they’re all pretty and they’re likeable. Pal Sin is very good as the young scholar. All of the cast members are quite comfortable when it comes to handling the comic moments.

And it’s a visually impressive movie. It’s obvious that the aim with the special effects was to make them crazy and fun.

Erotic Ghost Story has plenty of style and energy and entertainment value. It’s a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

If this movie whets your appetite for Chinese folklore and especially for stories of fox-spirits get hold of Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (readily available English translations).

The 88 Films Blu-Ray offers a lovely transfer and quite a few extras including two audio commentaries. This is one of those rare cases in which an audio commentary really is useful. To appreciate this movie fully you need to know at least a couple of things about Chinese folklore, and about Category III movies.

I Am Frigid... Why? (1972)

I Am Frigid... Why? was a follow-up by Max Pécas to his 1971 hit I Am a Nymphomaniac. Pécas later admitted that he made a big mistake with the title. I Am a Nymphomaniac sounded sexy and fun. I Am Frigid... Why? doesn’t sound like fun at all. In fact it sounds like a terribly serious Danish sex hygiene film. It failed to equal the commercial success of the previous film.

Pécas made a series of stylish erotic movies during the 60s and 70s some of which were distributed in the United States by Radley Metzger. Which is appropriate. They have a slightly similar aesthetic and are both filmmakers who mix art and eroticism.

I Am Frigid... Why? is the story of Doris (Sandra Julien), a gardener’s daughter from the provinces. We know right from the start why she is frigid, and she knows as well. She was raped.

After boarding school she meets a man and falls in love with him but it just doesn’t happen for her in the bedroom. He tries to be understanding for a while, until he finds a more willing and exciting bed partner.

In Paris she tries to start a new life, and finds herself drawn into a world of decadence.

She becomes involved with a woman, but still no bedroom joy.

Then she becomes a call-girl, in the belief that being frigid will boost her career.

Eventually she finds a psychiatrist. It’s not that she needs to know why she has this problem. She needs to know how to fix it. And he may be pointing her in the right direction. She needs to find the right man, the man meant for her, the man she is destined to love. There are a couple of candidates, and in both cases there are reasons why things might not work out.

The lovely Sandra Julien gives a fine performance as a woman who craves love more than sexual pleasure but believes that you cannot have one without the other.

The erotic scenes are reasonably well executed and I think Pécas was aiming for the same arty erotic vibes as Radley Metzger (although Metzger did it better). The psychedelic freak-out sex scenes are rather cool although the slapstick sex scene I cringe-inducing.

I love late 1960s/early 1970s euro-decadence. It’s something the Italians did particularly well, especially Umberto Lenzi and Massimo Dallamano. Pécas demonstrated that the French could play that game as well.

I love the night-club scene with the giant fish tank full of girls.

There are some delightfully groovy moments and some hints of psychedelia. And lava lamps! Doris’s Paris apartment is just so incredibly early 70s, but in a good way.

This is a movie that tries to be an art movie and an exploitation movie and a psychological melodrama and it does so with mixed success but it’s an interesting attempt.

This is another movie that could not be made today. It’s a movie that suggests that black-and-white moral judgments are simplistic and unworkable when you’re dealing with real people.

Mondo Macabro have presented both I Am a Nymphomaniac and I Am Frigid... Why? on a single Blu-Ray. Both movies look pretty good.

I Am a Nymphomaniac is the better film but they’re both worth a look and the Blu-Ray is a very worthwhile purchase.

I’ve reviewed a much earlier Max Pécas movie, Daniella By Night (1961), a spy thriller romance staring Elke Sommer and the excellent classy sophisticated juvenile delinquent movie Sweet Violence (1962), again with Elke Sommer.

I Am a Nymphomaniac (1971)

I Am a Nymphomaniac (Je suis une nymphomane) is a 1971 French softcore erotic film directed by Max Pécas who also co-wrote the script.

Carole (Sandra Julien) is a rather innocent very sexually repressed girl living in a provincial town in France. She’s a virgin and she gets nervous if her boyfriend Eric (Alain Hitier) makes even the slightest attempt at physical intimacy.

One thing I liked is that this film doesn’t resort to crude clichés like childhood trauma to explain her previous sexual repression. Her childhood was not nightmarish. It was just boring. Her parents did not mistreat her. They were just dull and conformist and very repressed. Her life was simply stifling.

Then Carole has an accident. She falls down a flight of stairs. She suffers no serious physical injuries but something very serious has happened to her brain. She is now a nymphomaniac! She can’t stop touching herself and she can’t stop thinking about the pleasures of the flesh.

She is of course appalled. Even thinking about such things is wicked.

She now feels like a scarlet woman and she will of course have to leave her home and go to Paris. That’s where wicked women go.

After her boss’s nephew seduces her boss sends her to Paris to work for his sister. Murielle (Janine Reynaud) runs an art gallery so we figure that she is probably sexually depraved. Which turns out to be the case. Murielle seduces her and then sets her up with decadent Roman businessman Bruno (Michel Lemoine).

Carole naturally seeks medical help but while she is assured that nymphomania is curable it sounds like it will be a long cure. She decides to try religion but that doesn’t seem to help.

As a nymphomaniac she’s a bit of an under-achiever. But any sexual urges at all have always horrified her and they still horrify her. She is consumed with guilt. After a bizarre carnival sequence she tries to slash her wrists.

Then kindly handsome young doctor Michel (Patrick Verde). He is sure he can cure her. He moves her into his apartment. Yes, you might think that’s a bit ethically dubious but even though Carole is smokin’ hot and perpetually horny he is never tempted by her. He’s a doctor. No doctor would take advantage of a patient in a situation like this. Even when she takes her clothes off and starts climbing all over him in bed he isn’t tempted. Doctors are so dedicated!

The story is played very very straight. The temptation would have been to take a tongue-in-cheek approach but that temptation is resisted.

In an odd way the fact that it’s played so straight makes it feel more wild and crazy than it would have been had it been played overtly wild and crazy. It’s extremely difficult to believe that the audience is expected to take all this nonsense seriously. Carole is subjected to a battery of physical examinations to determine whether she’s a true nymphomaniac.

Of course it’s also possible that Pécas was trying to avoid censorship problems, much as early 60s American sexploitation movies would offer lots of salacious material but add a preface in which a respectable doctor would warn us that this is a serious film addressing a problem that threatens the nation’s youth and the moral fibre of society. In other words Pécas may be offering what exploitation filmmakers called a “square-up” - presenting titillation in the guise of a public service.

In fact I’m convinced that Pécas is winking at us and assumes that we are not going to take anything in this movie the slightest bit seriously.

The acting is mostly OK. Sandra Julien is gorgeous and is able to sell us on the idea that Carole is a sweet innocent girl tortured by her lusts. The standout performer is the always amazing Janine Raynaud as the cheerfully depraved Murielle.

The sex scenes are tame but they’re artfully and imaginatively shot in a manner reminiscent of Radley Metzger’s style.

I Am a Nymphomaniac is most interesting for its odd subtle off-kilter feel. I enjoyed it and I recommend it.

I’ve reviewed a much earlier Max Pécas movie, Daniella By Night (1961), a spy thriller romance staring Elke Sommer and the excellent classy sophisticated juvenile delinquent movie Sweet Violence (1962), again with Elke Sommer.

Home Before Midnight (1979)

Some people see Home Before Midnight, made in 1978 and released in 1979, as an oddity in Pete Walker’s career as a director. If however you’re familiar with his early films such as Cool It, Carol! as well as his blood-drenched 70s horror films it doesn’t seem like such an outlier.

The tail end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s was a fascinating period in British cinema. The draconian censorship was starting to loosen up a little. British filmmakers were, very nervously, exploring the possibilities of making honest grown-up movies about sexual subjects.

Home Before Midnight came out in 1979 but it is a late entry in this intriguing cycle of British films. It was controversial at the time. Today it would have critics heading for the fainting couch.

Mike Beresford (James Aubrey) is the lyricist for a rock band. He’s 28. Despite his profession he’s a pretty ordinary pretty decent sort of guy. He picks up a pretty hitchhiker. Her name is Ginny (Alison Elliott). She tells him studying fashion design. They have sex but from the start it’s obvious that their attraction goes beyond the sexual. They fall head over heels in love very quickly.

Their relationship blossoms.

Then Mike finds Ginny’s bracelet. It was a birthday present. It has her birth date on it. She’s 14.

Up to this point Mike has had not the slightest reason even to think about her age. She looks maybe 19. She behaves like a girl of that age. She’s quite sophisticated and quite poised. She is obviously sexually very experienced. It worth pointing out that Alison Elliott, who plays Ginny, was indeed 19 at the time. And she looks 21 at least.

Of course it’s all going to become very messy. The police become involved. Mike is charged with things he did do and a whole bunch of things he didn’t do. There are betrayals.

It’s important to note the class angle. Mike is working class. Ginny is very middle-class. Her school is concerned only with its own reputation. Ginny’s father is horrified at the threat to the family’s middle-class respectability. He is incapable of understanding that Ginny has in fact been very sexually active for quite some time. He prefers to think that some awful working-class yob has corrupted his pure innocent little girl.

Clearly Walker had a few things to say in this film. The law has nothing to do with justice. The law is a blunt instrument. Even when wielded with good intentions it crushes people, and the police and the courts do not have good intentions.

Love does not conquer all. If there’s a conflict between love and the desire for social approval then love goes out the window. Mike’s problem is that he is the babe in the woods. He is amazed when he feels the metaphorical knife plunged into his back.

It’s interesting that some reviews criticise this movie for mixing a serious approach to a sensitive subject with exploitation content. I think this is a very wrong-headed attitude but it is alas very common - the assumption that sexual content is automatically exploitation content. I think that’s nonsense.

And it’s certainly nonsense in the case of this film. There’s nudity and there are some steamy sex scenes. They’re absolutely necessary. We have to understand that this is more than a sexual relationship, but it is a sexual relationship. We also need to understand that this is a case of very strong mutual sexual attraction. Ginny is not being pressured into anything. She is hot for Mike and she enjoys the sex very much. You might not approve of their relationship but if you’re going to get anything out of the movie you do need to understand the nature of the relationship. And the fact Ginny is not merely willing but eager to have sex becomes crucially important in plot terms.

And Walker approaches the sex scenes in a very sensitive way. They’re passionate but they’re not the least bit crass.

Perhaps the thing that will shock modern viewers the most is the movie’s assumption that the line between victim and villain is not clear-cut.

James Aubrey is very good as Mike. He plays him like a deer caught in the headlights and it works. Alison Elliott handles Ginny’s teenage girl wild unpredictability well. As for the age thing, whether she was a good casting choice is harder to say. She is totally unconvincing as a 14-year-old but in some ways that makes her the right choice since so much hinges on the fact that Mike does not even suspect Ginny’s real age. An actress who looked younger would have made this a completely different movie.

This is an intelligent provocative movie and it’s highly recommended.

I also very highly recommend Pete Walker’s earlier Cool It, Carol! (1970) which also deals intelligently with sex.

Other British movies of around this time that also try to deal intelligently with sex are All the Right Noises (1970), Baby Love (1969) and especially the superb I Start Counting (1969).

Gradiva (2006)

Gradiva, released in 2006, was Alain Robbe-Grillet’s final feature film.

In all his films Robbe-Grillet always made sure the audience knew from the start that they were not going to get anything resembling a realist film from him. He was going to be playing games with narrative. There were going to be multiple layers of reality and unreality. Maybe none of it is real. In fact of course none of it is real because this is a movie. These people are actors. It’s a made-up story.

The setting is Morocco, in the present day. John Locke (James Wilby) is a professor researching a book on the painter Delacroix. He has heard of some hitherto unknown sketchbooks by the artist. It’s an exciting discovery. If they’re authentic. He isn’t sure if they’re authentic or not.

They contain sketches done by the artist during his time in Mogador. But Delacroix is not known to have ever visited Mogador. The sketches are of a woman with whom he had a affair. The woman was later executed. If she ever existed.

We are introduced to a beautiful blonde woman (played by Arielle Dombasle). She is writing a story. For all we know she might be writing the screenplay for Alain Robbe-Grillet’s movie Gradiva. Later she tells another woman that she is writing her memoirs but she does not believe memoirs should be about the past. They should be about the future.

Locke sees this beautiful blonde woman and pursues her through the streets of Marrakech. He loses her but ends up in Anatoli’s establishment. Anatoli is an art dealer. Or he might be a white slaver. Or he might be a doctor. His establishment might be a brothel or it might be a theatre.

There are young women being whipped. They might be slaves. They might be actresses pretending to be slaves, or slaves pretending to be actresses.

Locke lives with Belkis, a cute Arab girl. She might be his slave or his mistress. Either way she is clearly in love with him. He is very fond of her but whether he is in love with her or not is uncertain.

The beautiful blonde woman tells Locke that she is an actress but while she does some film and theatre work she is mostly a dream actress. She earns her living acting in other people’s dreams. Her name is Leila, or perhaps Gradiva. She may be the ghost of Delacroix’s long-dead mistress.

Leila may at this moment be acting in one of Locke’s dreams.

There have been a number of murders. Locke has seen some of the corpses of the dead girls although they might be actresses.

Locke certainly has dreams. Some may be drug-induced. It’s also possible that the dreams have been induced by Delacroix’s sketches. Art is a powerful drug.

Of course, since this is a Robbe-Grillet film, there is plenty of sado-masochistic eroticism but since this is a Robbe-Grillet film we have serious doubts as to whether any of the whippings are real. The young women might be actresses. This could be a movie in which actresses are playing the roles of actresses.

Robbe-Grillet felt that his movies used the erotic as raw material but were not erotic films as such because there was always a critical distance. The erotic material does not seem real and there is no attempt to persuade us that any of the erotic encounters are real. There is an air of artificiality which is the exact opposite of the effect at which an erotic movie would be aiming.

For me the key to Robbe-Grillet’s work, and the reason I enjoy his work so much, is his playfulness. He enjoyed making movies. He wanted people to enjoy watching them. He wanted his viewers to enjoy the game.

By 2006 Robbe-Grillet was totally out of touch with contemporary tastes in cinema. That’s why this movie is vastly superior to almost all 21st century movies. What’s even better is that his whole aesthetic was out of fashion. Robbe-Grillet assumes that his audience will have no difficulty in coping with movies that operate on multiple levels and in which reality and dream and fantasy and illusion and art form an intoxicating cocktail. He also assumes that there is no need to give the viewer any clues as to where reality ends and dream takes over. He sees no need to spoon-feed the audience.

And of course it is always a mistake in a film such as this to offer the audience such clues. The whole point is that life and art and dream defy explanation. We’re not supposed to expect any clear-cut explanations. That would spoil everything.

The location shooting in Morocco is a plus. Any Robbe-Grillet movie is going to be a visual treat and this is no exception.

Gradiva is a mesmerising film. It’s very arty but it’s also witty and it’s fun. Art films are allowed to be enjoyable. Highly recommended.

The Mondo Macabro DVD offers a lovely transfer and includes an excellent in-depth interview with Robbe-Grillet.

I’ve reviewed almost all of his movies. La Belle Captive remains my favourite but I have a very definite soft spot for L’immortelle and Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974) is dazzling. I also highly recommend his novel La Maison de rendez-vous (available in an English translation).

The ABC of Love and Sex: Australia Style (1978)

John D. Lamond’s 1978 ozploitation opus The ABC of Love and Sex: Australia Style was very obviously a follow-up to his 1976 success Australia After Dark so you might assume that this is going to follow the same formula. To a superficial extent it does (they’re both a collection of erotic vignettes) but it’s actually quite different in some surprising ways.

Australia After Dark is very much a mondo movie and it has all of the weirdness and all of the idiosyncracies of that peculiar genre. It’s deliberately outrageous and not intended to be taken the least bit seriously.

The ABC of Love and Sex is a sex education film. Well, sort of. Of course the intentions are entirely commercial. It is in reality a sexploitation feature. There were reasons for choosing the sex education film format, which we’ll get to later.

As the title suggests the movie goes through the alphabet, giving us brief snippets of information/entertainment on various topics related to sex. A is for Anatomy, C is for Contraception, etc.

The actors and actresses give visual demonstrations. For example, for Anatomy they take their clothes off.

There is an extraordinary amount of both male and female frontal nudity. And lots of sex.

The film was shot mostly in Melbourne but with some shooting in Sweden (including scenes in a live sex club).

This is a movie that tries to be whimsical and lighthearted but also tries to convince us that it’s a real sex education film (in fact most of the information about sex is quite factual). As a result the movie has an odd mixture of tones which gives it a certain offbeat charm.

It also tries really hard to be positive. F is for Fun. Yes, sex is allowed to be fun. Fun was legal in 1978.

Don’t expect to be convulsed with laughter but it does have a few amusing moments.

Given that it was made in 1978 you won’t be surprised to learn that it’s deliciously and gleefully and uncompromisingly offensive, dated and problematic.

It’s also entertaining in its own odd way, and erotic in a strange sort of way.

The most startling thing about this movie is that many of the sex scenes are clearly, obviously and very visibly non-simulated. Yes, these guys and gals are actually getting it on. There’s lots of visible penetration. We’re not talking about blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpses. There’s even very obviously non-simulated fellatio. This movie is certainly borderline hardcore. Well, actual hardcore.

Presumably the producers figured that if they presented the movie as educational they would be able to get away with a lot more. In fact they didn’t get away with it and the censors made quite a few cuts. Those cuts have been restored for Umbrella’s DVD release.

These kinds of sex education movies released as sexploitation were moderately common at the time, the best-known being the Swedish The Language of Love (1969). The Swedes of course managed to make sex seem like a dreary but necessary biological function, about as exciting as brushing your teeth. But The ABC Of Love is Australian so it suggests that sex is something you might actually enjoy doing.

The ABC of Love and Sex: Australia Style has an oddball appeal. It’s so very very 70s, and very very Australian. Recommended for those reasons. John D. Lamond went on to direct Felicity (1978), one of the best softcore erotic movies ever made.

Umbrella paired this one with Australia After Dark on a double-header DVD. The transfer is not dazzling but it’s perfectly acceptable.

Australia After Dark (1976)

Australia After Dark is a 1976 ozploitation/sexploitation feature which belongs to the weird and wonderful mondo film genre.

The mondo film, which began in Italy in 1962 with Mondo Cane, was very much an artifact of the 1960s. A mondo film is a pseudo-documentary focusing on brief looks at weird and sensational things, with some genuine footage and some faked footage. It’s a genre that hasn’t aged well. The mondo sex film is a curious sub-genre of a curious genre and Australia After Dark is such a film.

Being a mondo film means that there’s no plot at all. And since each segment only runs a couple of minutes there’s absolutely zero narrative anywhere. The connections between the segments are tenuous at best but mostly non-existent. There are no thematic connections. But that’s how mondo films are. Insofar as they have an appeal it lies in the fact that you have absolutely no idea what to expect next.

It was the nudity that was going to sell the movie (and in fact did sell it) and there’s an immense amount of frontal nudity. On the other hand a mondo film is supposed to cover a huge range of sensational or weird subjects so the sexy segments are interspersed with odd sensational stuff.

Director John D. Lamond always had an eye on international markets so there’s lots of Australiana (especially stuff dealing with the Outback) which would have bored Australian viewers to tears but would have seemed exotic to overseas audiences.

And you know that the boring segments will be over in a minute or two and we’ll be back to nude women. Lamond really did understand what sells.

The challenge of course is to find dozens of different ways to get attractive young women out of their clothes. Lamond is up to the challenge. Girls trying on bikinis. Nude bathing on the Barrier Reef. Clothing fetishism. Food fetishism. Nude scuba diving. A gentleman’s club that offer lovely handmaidens for stressed businessmen. Painters using nude women as their canvases.

No movie such as this would be complete without a witchcraft in the modern world segment. Here we get two - white magic and black magic. Fortunately both kinds of magic require beautiful young ladies to get naked. If you can’t attract an audience with nude witches you’re just not cut out to be a filmmaker.

There are also UFO cultists and they’re always fun. These ones are so crazy it takes one’s breath away. There are hippies. And there’s an insane entertainer who is insane in ways you never imagined were possible. You might be wondering if the Chariots of the Gods craze gets a mention. It does. Yes, ancient astronauts.

People today believe just as many crazy things as people in the 70s (people in every generation believe different crazy things) but the crazy things people believed in then were totally different, and more fun.

This movie’s appeal at the time was obviously the copious quantities of nudity. Today it’s a fascinating time capsule. It’s so very very 1970s. Guys with long hair. Women with hair, well you know where women had hair back then. 70s fashions. 70s cultural attitudes guaranteed to make twenty-somethings of today burst into tears. 1970s Sydney street scenes. Sydney’s notorious red-light district, King’s Cross, in all its seedy sleazy 70s glory. Surfer’s Paradise in the 70s. And that attitude to sex - that it was naughty but lots of fun.

No mondo film was ever meant to be taken seriously and this one is no exception. There’s some obviously genuine footage and plenty of obviously staged footage.

Lamond went on to make the best of all Emmanuelle clones, Felicity, in 1978.

I’d love to be able to report that there’s a fully restored special edition Blu-Ray but sadly that hasn’t happened. Your best bet is the old Umbrella Entertainment DVD double feature which also includes Lamond’s 1978 follow-up, The ABC of Love and Sex Australian Style (this DVD is still available). The transfer is letterboxed and not fantastic but this is the kind of movie that is more fun to watch if the print looks a bit scuzzy.

That time capsule element is certainly the reason to see this film. It’s just like being back in the 70s! If that appeals to you you’ll enjoy Australia After Dark.

The idea of a mondo film focused on sex was not exactly original back in 1976. British filmmakers Arnold L. Miller and Stanley A. Long made several in the 60s, beginning with West End Jungle (1961) and continuing with London in the Raw (1965), Primitive London (1965). Their sexy mondo films are actually quite entertaining.